


Abierto

by SegaBarrett



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Exotic Dancers, Handcuffs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:06:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7464414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor travels with Nick and finds something interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abierto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mnemosyne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosyne/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Fear the Walking Dead, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Thank you to my beta, Chaosprincess!

“Paradise,” Nick Clark was saying, and Victor Strand was listening.

He was laying back on the patio – they both were – and they were staring up at the warm Mexican sun.

This was a place like no other. After all, Victor had his love here, inside the house – perfect Thomas, impeccable Thomas – and then here was Nick. What was Nick?

Maybe he was something Victor Strand did not yet have a word for. There were so few words in the English language, after all.

“What if we went exploring?” Nick said suddenly, and Victor had to laugh. He truly was a boy at heart sometimes, or maybe a newborn puppy, eager to waddle out and face the day no matter what hell may have rained down on them the day before.

“Exploring where, exactly?” Victor asked, though he had a few ideas in mind. None that Mama Celia would likely approve of, however. She seemed to have this way of creeping around, knowing everything he was up to. It was odd to think she’d become adoptive mother to such an open soul as Thomas – though there was that hardness in him, too, Victor couldn’t and shouldn’t forget that. But when Thomas was lax, Victor had to be rough, and vice versa. Ying and yang.

Nick shrugged.

“Around,” he said. “I feel like we’re cooped up here. And what if something happens, anyway, and we have to get out of here at the last minute? I have no idea of most of what’s around here – what about you?”

Now it was Victor’s turn to shrug.

“I know enough of the lay-out.”

Nick looked at him and cocked his head to the side.

“Come on. Go on an adventure with me.”

There he was again, eager little puppy Nick. It would be annoying if it wasn’t so endearing.

“Only because you’re likely to get yourself killed if I don’t invite myself along,” Victor said, even though he knew it wasn’t true. Nick wasn’t like Alicia or Chris or Travis or even steel-spined, loud-mouthed Madison – he knew that Nick would be hard pressed to find a challenge he couldn’t overcome. The kid was crafty.

Maybe it was because Victor, at some level, didn’t want to let him out of his sight.

“I’ll tell Thomas where we’re going… not that we know. But… I’ll tell him that we’re going. Then he’ll know who to blame if something takes a bite out of me.”

He walked back in and found his lover laying back in bed, reading a novel. That was his Thomas – with the dancing eyes and the always working brain. It was hard to picture a time in his life where he hadn’t known this man, hadn’t been a part of him in some way.

Victor walked up to the headboard and leaned in, placing a kiss on Thomas’ cheeks.

“My Abigail,” he said with a wide smile.

“Your Abigail is your boat,” Thomas replied, setting his book – In the Time of the Butterflies – down on the nightstand. 

“I’d rather cruise down the river on you,” Victor teased. “I’m heading out with Nick for a little bit. Did you want to come?”

Thomas smiled and shook his head.

“I’m getting old, Victor. Once I get into bed these days, I find myself preferring to stay there. But you be safe.” He took Victor’s hand and gently squeezed it. “I don’t want you getting into too much trouble. You’re getting old, too.”

Victor snorted.

“I’m not old enough to stop getting into trouble. What do you think me for?”

“The man who stole my heart and my wallet?”

Victor kissed him on the head again.

“I’ll see you tonight, Thomas.”

“I look forward to it.”

There was a strange giddiness in Victor’s head as he walked down the hall and out the door.

***

“So what exactly did you want to look for? It would be helpful if we had some sort of checklist for exactly what we’re going to pay attention to.”

“Anything interesting.”

“So when I said helpful… Apparently you took that to literally mean nothing at all.”

“Maybe something like that?”

Victor looked up to see what his young companion was pointing at; it seemed like the strangest sort of mirage Victor had ever seen. Although it was surrounded by yellow, dusty plains of some sort, there was a tiny building standing up and reaching out to the sky with red, flashing lights.

A sign in the window said: Abierto.

“We should go in,” Nick urged, “Who knows what might be in there?”

Victor cocked an eyebrow.

“I have a pretty good idea of what might be in there,” he mused. Nick stared at him.

“It looks like a strip club,” he agreed, “But how is there a strip club in the middle of the apocalypse?”

“What else would stand up to an apocalypse?” Nick asked, shrugging. “My mom always says that you can’t keep men away from naked women.”

“I’m taking a guess that your mother wasn’t saying that as a compliment.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Nick hunched forward. He looked like a rabbit, ready to hop away from a predator that was barreling right towards it. Victor wondered if Nick saw him as the predator. “Should we go in?”

Victor snorted.

“I don’t know that we’ll find a lot of useful supplies at the strip club. Maybe if we’re running low on glitter and lube.”

Nick wasn’t listening, however – he was walking ever more closely to the forest-green door that separated the old, abandoned (Victor assumed, at least) strip club from the rest of the barren land. All he could really do was follow him – without Victor, Nick would probably do something stupid. Almost certainly, in fact.

Or maybe it was just Victor’s reasoning so that he didn’t have to worry about being left behind. He was a man that was used to being left behind, if it was a thing a person could get used to. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

When Nick pressed through the door – which, judging from the strain of Nick pressing against it, was a lot heavier than it had looked from the outside – music shot out like a dog escaping from a cage.

Victor let out a slow murmur – what was this, exactly? Maybe it was all a dream, and a very strange one at that, because as he stepped in after his young friend (maybe that was a name for it? What Nick was? Victor would get back to himself on that), he mused that he would not dream of strippers, particularly not female ones.

The song that was playing was “Jump” by Rihanna, and it increased in volume as Victor stepped inside. To his left, he saw a bar stocked with a full range of alcohol, and to his right he saw an elevated dancing floor.

There was a young woman – tall, brunette and thin – working her way around a shining silver pole in the middle of the floor, to the music.

There was no audience; at least, not one that Victor could see. For all he knew in this new crazy world, the girl could be dancing for the benefit of ghosts.

Victor turned to look at Nick. What was this, exactly? Maybe they had stumbled on some sort of doomsday cult. That was all he needed today, when he could be back with Thomas, lazing around on the bed and trying to avoid Celia’s judgmental eye.

Instead, he had chased the bird in the bush, and it had led him here.

“Let’s go.” He kept his voice low and deep, hoping to leave as easily as they had entered. Maybe this was all a mirage, for the young woman dancing seemed utterly oblivious.

Until she wasn’t.

“Stop right there.”

Victor heard the click before he saw the barrel. He shifted his feet and looked, but didn’t turn his head, to see where Nick was.

The kid was standing right off to Victor’s side, looking as surprised as Victor felt. The important thing, however, was to not give off a whiff of it. Victor could have gotten a Ph.D. in hiding what he was truly thinking.

“What brings you here?” the girl asked, and Victor let out a quiet sigh, as if he had seen the question coming and was, honestly, rather disappointed that she hadn’t come up with something better.

“We were… in the area,” Victor explained. “Saw this place. It caught our eye, I have to say. If you were trying to keep your base discreet… I can’t say that you’re doing a very good job.”

“No need to be discreet when there’s no one around.”

“And how about here? How many people are here?”

The girl shook her head.

“Enough talking. Stand back to back.”

Victor raised an eyebrow but complied, figuring that meant that however many others were in this hide-out, it wasn’t many, and overpowering a 100 pound twenty-year-old wouldn’t particularly tax him if he had to make a break for it.

But not yet.

Victor turned and felt Nick’s palm press against his own. He opened his mouth to say something – certainly not to talk about how long he had waited to feel Nick’s hands against his own, certainly not – but before he could come up with anything, he heard a sharp click and then, as if his audio and video weren’t quite in sync, felt a cuff close around his own wrist. 

And then saw it close around Nick’s.

“Get under the table,” the girl said, long legs gliding across as she yanked at the cuffs, pulling Victor and Nick over in the direction of, as she termed it, the table – an old card table, out of place in the fancy club décor. “Sit down.”

Normally, Victor would have had the manpower to fight back, but with his better arm attached to Nick’s better arm, his options had become more limited. 

“Sit here and shut up,” the girl said again. “I need to go… Discuss some things.”

“With who?” Nick asked.

“You don’t need to know that. All you need to do is sit here, be quiet, and be glad I don’t shoot you both.”

Victor would have put his hands together dramatically, but his current predicament would have made that slightly difficult. 

“Sure,” he said finally, letting the sarcasm drip off his tongue. He probably could have fought her still, given that he had one hand free, but he wasn’t confident in his ability to both get out of the way, fight her, and guide Nick to safety. Too many unknown variables; didn’t make sense to make a move.

Not yet, at least. 

“There’s just one thing I’d like to know,” he said a second later, then paused and continued, “Who are you?”

The girl cocked her head to the side and let out a breathy laugh.

“Name’s Margaret. I’ll be right back.”

***

“So what’s our plan?” Nick asked as soon as Margaret had walked out of earshot. 

“My first plan is to never again take you up on a suggestion, pet,” Victor murmured, before looking around for something that he could use to unlock the handcuffs. 

“Hey, we did find a place,” Nick pointed out. 

“We found a strip club. A strip club of women. You don’t know how entirely unhelpful that is to me. That’s like saying to a vegetarian that you’ve discovered an amazing new steak place and wondering why they aren’t impressed. Now, shh. Look. Find. Help.”

“Maybe there’s stuff here. Maybe once we wriggle out of this, we can find some stuff that’s helpful – or maybe this is a group that can help us. I mean, did you notice that this place seems like it hasn’t been touched by the Dead at all? Maybe there’s something special about it, something that can help us.” He paused. “And maybe this is some kind of international base – that girl Margaret was speaking English, right?”

Victor rolled his eyes.

“You know a lot of people in Mexico speak English, right Nick? Life down here is not a telenovela.” Nick paused. 

“That’s not really the important issue right now,” he replied. “We can get back to our regularly scheduled Nick-is-Stupid after we get out of these cuffs.” He paused and reached up under the table. “Would a screw work?”

Victor couldn’t keep a little smirk off his face as he thought, it would for me. Then he snapped back into being serious. 

“I can make it work,” he mumbled, using his free hand to fumble with it, trying to slide it into the hole and undo the mechanism. 

“Do we have time, Strand? Maybe we should just run already…”

“Handcuffed to each other?” Even in the dire circumstances, Victor couldn’t help but smile. The image in his head was somewhere between a particularly kinky night out and a disorganized three-legged race at a county fair. 

“Yeah. I think we should quit screwing around and just make a break for it. We’re not that far from home and if we make off now, we don’t have to stick around to see whatever their vote about us is… I’m not confident that they like us that much.”

It took Victor a little longer than he would have liked to stumble to his feet and beginning pulling his young – well, was there a word for someone who is handcuffed to you, Victor mused – in the direction of the door, making more noise than he would have preferred.

“Hey!” he heard from behind them.

He didn’t know exactly who was coming for him, nor did he particularly want to find out.

Victor yanked his hand forward and with his free hand grabbed at the metal bar on the door. It felt a lot heavier on the way out than it had going in.   
When he pulled it back, it felt like he was pulling himself up on a train, like he was in one of the movies he would watch growing up, like he was going to fight the villain on top and someone would get taken out by the incoming tunnel.

Or maybe he was the villain – nowadays one couldn’t be too sure. 

It felt like suspended animation as he pulled it back and pushed through, beginning to run and pulling the hapless Nick behind him to catch up as well as he could. 

Maybe it was better if he just pulled him. Nick was thin and light – maybe he would fly like some kind of kite. It was an interesting, if somewhat disturbing, mental image.

“Strand, slow down!” Nick was yelling, but he was just going to need to hang on to his hat for a while – after all, Victor’s wrist was killing him too, but you didn’t see him complaining.

Victor’s feet hit the courtyard and dove through the front door. 

“Go Fish, Senorita Clark.” Thomas looked up from the table he was sitting at and shook his head, then turned to Alicia, who put her cards in front of her face and peeked at them. 

“Seriously?” she asked. “You do… have a key to those, right?”

Victor tried to catch his breath. 

He looked around the room. 

He probably looked haggard and, somehow, sunburnt, but he had a bit of a reputation to maintain. He swung Nick in front of him in one swift motion and pressed a kiss to his lips. 

Nick stared at him with wide but amused eyes. 

Alicia waited a moment and then began to applaud.

“It’s about time,” she announced before tossing a potato chip in her mouth. 

“It might be the calm before the storm,” Nick muttered at him. “But what a calm it is.”

Victor couldn’t help but agree.


End file.
